Quotation Friday

"I was once present when the poet was asked by someone, 'Sophocles, how are you in sex? Can you still have intercourse with a woman?' 'Silence, man,' he said. 'Most joyfully did I escape it, as though I had run away from a sort of frenzied and savage master.' I thought at the time that he had spoken well and I still do. For, in every way, old age brings great peace and freedom from such things."
- Cephalus in The Republic by Plato


"When the desires cease to strain and finally relax, [...] it is possible to be rid of very many mad masters. [...] there is just one cause: not old age, Socrates, but the character of the human beings. If they are orderly and content with themselves, even old age is only moderately troublesome; if they are not, then both age, Socrates, and youth alike turn out to be hard for that sort."
- Cephalus in The Republic by Plato


"But tell me something more. What do you suppose is the greatest good that you have enjoyed from possessing great wealth?"

"What I say wouldn't persuade many perhaps. For know well, Socrates," he said, "that when a man comes near to the realization that he will be making an end, fear and care enter him for things to which he gave no thought before."
- Socrates and Cephalus in The Republic by Plato